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FIFA team to inspect Salt Lake Stadium

Kolkata, Feb 27 IBNS | 1 year ago

A FIFA delegation, headed by deputy director and head of event management competition division Inaki Alvarez, will arrive in Kolkata on Thursday to inspect the Salt Lake Stadium for the under-17 Fifa World Cup football championship in 2017.

Fifa, the world football governing body, in its meeting in Brazil last year had awarded India the hosting rights for the FIFA U-17 World Cup 2017.

The FIFA in its final leg of investigation and inspection after visiting the venue in Guwahati on Thursday, will stay in Kolkata later in the day before visiting the Salt Lake Stadium on Friday morning, All India Football Federation's senior vice-president Subrata Dutta said.

He said the team will study the stadium's facilities, including pitch, sitting capacity, flood lights, dressing rooms for players and other basic need for hosting World Cup football tournament.

The Indian Football Association (IFA), Bengal's football organising body, has been active for some time to trim up the facilities at the stadium with replacing old chairs for new and other necessary changes to make the venue upto standard. But the pitch in the stadium has artificial turf.

The delegation comprises of Alvarez, Asian Football Confederation deputy general secretary Windsor John, FIFA IT-Competition Vijay Parthasarthy, Asia-FIFA development officer Shaji Prabhakaran and AIFF I-League CEO Sunando Dhar..The visit will be a part of inspection to various stadiums in the eight prospective cities among which six are slated to host the 2017 FIFA U-17 World Cup.

The FIFA team earlier visited New Delhi, Pune, Goa, Mumbai, Bangalore and Cochin.